


The Magician's Wish

by mayhap



Category: The Magicians - Lev Grossman
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon - Book, Jealousy, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Past Quentin Coldwater/Alice Quinn, Wishes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:35:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21769216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayhap/pseuds/mayhap
Summary: Eliot makes a wish.
Relationships: Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Comments: 18
Kudos: 84
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	The Magician's Wish

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lurea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lurea/gifts).



“I could tell him, too, that to know and love one other human being is the root of all wisdom.”  
—Evelyn Waugh, _Brideshead Revisited_

❧

Eliot was not, in point of fact, actually questing as such when he spotted the Questing Beast, its telltale flank flashing whitely through the generously-laden trees of the Southern Orchard as he lounged in a plush green meadow, alone with a hamper and his thoughts. He wasn’t even dressed for it; he had a set of armor that he’d commissioned specifically for questing, elaborately embossed and exquisitely damascened with innumerable figures out of Fillorian lore, which he assumed was being meticulously maintained for him in his armory, unless it was one of the things that had been destroyed in the almost apocalypse that had damaged Castle Whitespire. Still, when Eliot spied the great white stag, he instinctively reached for a bow in order to shoot it and claim his three wishes, before he remembered that he didn’t have one and he didn’t need them.

He had planned to hunt the Questing Beast when Fillory was dying, hoping that perhaps he could use wishes to save it, and also to end Quentin’s exile and bring him back to Fillory. But, of course, Quentin had been the one to save Fillory, and he was no longer banished from it. He had simply decided that he was ready to move on from Fillory, and begin a new life with Alice, and Eliot was _very happy_ for them and dealing with it _just fine_. This was why, a year and a day after Quentin had left, Eliot had announced that he was taking a sabbatical of sorts, to reconnect with Fillory, and he might be gone for some time.

“Dibs on your chair,” Janet had responded immediately. He’d told her first, privately, before Josh and Poppy.

“I just assumed that you’d take it over again as soon as I got out of sight, you usurper.”

“I probably won’t even wait that long, honestly.” She swapped her usual mockery for that occasional sincerity that she wielded so disconcertingly. “Are you sure that it’s a good idea for you to be alone right now? Are you going to be okay?”

“I’ll be _fine_ ,” Eliot promised. “Really. I just need to clear my head a bit. See some magical sights, that sort of thing. I’ll be back before you know it.”

She looked him over critically. “If you say so.”

“Don’t get too comfortable in my chair.”

“I’m already planning two wars and a victory parade.”

Eliot had slipped out of Whitespire early in the morning and headed in a southerly direction, on foot. He had no particular destination in mind and he was in no hurry. By the time he’d reached the Southern Orchard, where trees blossomed and bore fruit year round, heedless of the seasons, he’d already decided that he’d been right. He was feeling better already.

Eliot didn’t need any wishes; he was the High King of Fillory, for fuck’s sake. What more could anyone ask for? Instead of a bow and arrow, he reached for the wine bottle to refill his glass. The Fillorian vintages were coming on by leaps and bounds these days, and this particular white was rather nice with strawberries, which he had also brought. He had just picked up another strawberry, quite small but perfectly red, when he froze, staring.

The great white stag had returned, emerging from the trees, its imposing rack of white antlers practically glowing in the mid-afternoon sun. It stalked right up to Eliot, as if it were paying a social call.

“Aren’t you even going to try to shoot me?”

It seemed somewhat affronted by this.

“I hadn’t planned on it,” Eliot admitted.

The Questing Beast lowered its heavy head and took the strawberry right from Eliot’s poised hand, its warm, whiskery white lips deft and mobile, like a horse’s.

“Doesn’t feel right,” it said, after it had swallowed the tiny morsel. “Everyone chases me. They all want to shoot me, to get me to grant them three wishes. It’s my purpose.”

Eliot, as a passionate devotee of protocol, was highly susceptible to this line of argument, but he resisted it, although he did get to his feet, so that he could at least address the stag more respectfully.

“Sorry,” he said. “I don’t even have any wishes to make. If you want someone to try to chase you, I’m sure you won’t have any trouble finding takers elsewhere.”

The Questing Beast eyed him skeptically, tossing its magnificent head with a snort.

“I’m going to grant you three wishes anyway,” it said. “As a favor, for not shooting me. I never really liked that part, to tell you the truth.”

Now it was Eliot’s turn to be skeptical. “You can’t do that,” he said. “There are rules. You don’t just grant wishes whenever you feel like it. That’s not how it works.”

The stag considered this, flicking its ears thoughtfully. “No,” it said. “I can grant you wishes if I want. Something has changed.”

Eliot thought of Quentin, filled with the power of a god, putting all of Fillory back together again with his own skilled magician’s hands. He had touched everything here, in one way or another—this grass, these strawberries, those fruit trees, this great white stag. He thought that Quentin might be responsible for this somehow. He wondered whether it was merely a single whimsical aberration, or whether there was some fundamental alteration in the rules, the deeper magicks, that had further ramifications for Fillory that he was not yet aware of. It was a new angle to explore, and the biggest Fillory nerd that he knew wasn’t around to talk about it with him.

“I wish Quentin were here,” Eliot said.

It was something that he had said regularly before, and then something that he thought but refrained from saying aloud, because Quentin was the one who had chosen not to be there. He hadn’t meant to say it aloud now, and he certainly hadn’t considered what the consequences would be before uttering it, but the stag was already nodding its head.

“On his way,” it said. “He’ll be here soon.”

Eliot’s rebellious heart leapt at the thought.

“No!” he protested. “I didn’t mean it like _that_.”

The Questing Beast shook its head at him. “You did.”

Eliot supposed that the stag must be granted some kind of insight into his desires by its very nature. That was embarrassing. He attempted to pull himself together.

“You!” he said, in his most kingly voice. “Go away. Out of sight.”

Eliot didn’t know if he could conceal from Quentin that he had wished him there, but at least he could try to hide the evidence. It wouldn’t exactly be a great mystery what had happened if the Questing Beast was standing right beside him.

“But I wanted to say hello to Quentin,” it protested. “I always liked him, you remember. Although he did manage to shoot me.”

“I _wish_ you would go away,” Eliot said recklessly. “And don’t let Quentin see you, either.”

“Very well,” said the Questing Beast, reproachfully. It turned and bounded back into the orchard, disappearing among the trees.

Eliot smoothed his floppy silk shirt and tried to appear casual. He would be surprised to see Quentin, and they would catch up, like old friends, and Quentin would go back to whatever it was that he was doing now and Eliot would stay in Fillory and everything would be fine. He had barely had time to tell himself this before he saw Quentin and he felt like he was the one who had been shot with an arrow.

Quentin looked _good_. He’d always been attractive, more attractive than he’d seemed to realize, but he had positively blossomed since Eliot had seen him last. He looked happy now, and confident, and at peace with himself in a really fundamental way, and Eliot had just torn him away form all that to bring him back here. It was extremely rude of him.

Although Quentin didn’t seem particularly disconcerted to find himself here, for whatever reason. He headed straight for Eliot, calling his name, and embraced him tightly. Eliot felt the lean planes of Quentin’s back through the cotton of his white dress shirt, interrupted here and there by the weals and notches of the scars he’d collected along the way, making up a map that Eliot knew by heart.

“Is it just you here, then?” Quentin asked, when they had separated and were looking each other over.

“Just me,” Eliot agreed lightly. He opted to skip over the part where he’d gone off alone because he was feeling sorry for himself. “It’s scandalous not to at least bring a devoted page or something, but I think my subjects have grown accustomed to being scandalized at this point. I’ve a white here that you simply must try,” he added, changing the subject. “It reminds me of a Sauternes, although the _terroir_ ’s still unmistakably Fillory. It’s heaven with strawberries.”

Quentin took the glass that Eliot pressed on him with the appropriate solemnity.

“That _is_ nice,” he pronounced, after he’d swirled it in the glass and rolled it around his mouth the way that Eliot had taught him to do.

Eliot couldn’t have been prouder if it’d been his own child, although his involvement in the actual production of either would have been comparable. He tipped more of it into Quentin’s glass.

“Fillory’s looking good, too,” Quentin added, gesturing around him.

“Thanks,” said Eliot, preening. “It mostly takes care of itself now, but I like to think that I’m decorative.”

They lounged companionably on the grass together like old times, like the summer when Quentin had first come to Brakebills and the two of them had roamed the campus together, although without the cigarettes, which Eliot had pruned from his list of vices. He craved one as he caught Quentin up on the ongoing rebuilding of Castle Whitespire, the birth of Princess Lily, and every other little bit of Fillory news that he could think of, aside from that business with the Questing Beast, which he obviously wasn’t going to bring to the attention of his favorite Fillory nerd now. Ordinarily, Eliot enjoyed nothing more than talking about himself, but there came a point when he could no longer resist questioning Quentin, like probing a wound.

“But enough about me,” he said, with exaggerated nonchalance. “What about you? What have you been up to?”

Quentin took another sip of wine to chase a strawberry. “Alice and I have been working on this thing,” he began. Of course the first word out of his mouth was _Alice_. “First, she isolates a single photon, and then we direct it, so it’s basically the world’s smallest laser. The idea is to make incredibly delicate repairs with it.”

“Does it work?”

“Well, the theory is completely sound. I’ve checked it over pretty thoroughly. The thing is, it’s hard to tell if we actually have the photon in the first place, which makes it difficult to work out the technique for directing it. There’s a lot of trial and error involved. It’s interesting, though.”

Eliot loved with when Quentin geeked out about magic, and now he’d added a casual confidence about his mastery of it that was really astonishingly sexy.

“It might actually be fundamentally impossible to know if the photon is there or not until we try to do something with it,” Quentin went on. “At least, on Earth. I know it’s possible in Fillory, because I did it once. It was when I was recuperating with the centaurs, and there was nothing else to do, you know, so I tried all the big magic I could think of.”

“Too bad I wasn’t there,” Eliot said. “I could have found something else for you to do.”

He reflexively turned it into a mildly flirtatious half-joke, but Eliot remembered how awful it had been when he had finally agreed to leave Quentin behind, unconscious, the centaurs pessimistic about his recovery, with a heartfelt letter that he could only hope that Quentin would ever get a chance to read. It was the first time that they had been separated without knowing if or when they would see each other again, and it hadn’t gotten easier with practice.

“I’m sure you would have,” Quentin returned. “But I think you did the right thing, getting out when you did. I’m just glad that you brought me back with you.”

Fillory’s not the same without you, Eliot thought but did _not_ say. He and Quentin were having a moment, and he didn’t want to spoil it. He took a long swig of his wine, fresh acid balancing honey sweet.

“Me too,” he managed around the lump in his throat.

When Quentin leaned over to kiss him, it felt so natural. He kissed sweetly at first, and then deeper, with more conviction. His free hand found Eliot’s neck and his long fingers caught in Eliot’s hair. Eliot wanted to cast a spell and slow time to an infinitesimal crawl so that he could live inside that kiss forever, and it was with extreme reluctance that he broke it off instead.

“No,” he protested feebly. His head was spinning, and it wasn’t from the wine. “We can’t be doing this.”

“No?” Quentin was still too close, wine and strawberries on his breath, and he was looking into Eliot’s face searchingly.

“Not again,” Eliot continued. He was a little breathless. “Alice—”

“Oh!” Quentin’s face cleared. “Oh no. Alice and I are just friends.”

Eliot scrambled backwards a bit, trying to give himself more space. “Plum and I could _hear_ you upstairs at the townhouse, you know.”

Quentin had the grace to look embarrassed, but not all that embarrassed. “Uh, right,” he said, pushing a wayward lock of white hair off of his face. “That.”

“Yes,” Eliot said primly. They were both sitting up now, wine glasses abandoned carelessly in the grass. “That.”

“We never did get back together, though,” Quentin said. “Like, in a relationship, I mean. At first it was because we were taking things slow, but it just never really felt right. We both agreed about that,” he added, defensively, as if responding to something that Eliot hadn’t actually said to him. “Honestly. That’s why I came back here.”

Eliot listened to Quentin saying all these things that he would have wanted to hear with a growing horror. That fucking stag must be responsible for this. It had twisted his wish that wasn’t even supposed to be a wish and now Quentin was gazing at him earnestly and it was all a lie.

“But I thought you were done with Fillory,” Eliot said, rather than what he was actually thinking. “I distinctly recall you saying that you were moving on.” The last time they had parted, both of them had been conscious and neither of them had been crying, and in a way that made it the worst time of all.

“Yeah, well.” Quentin ducked his head. “Fillory wasn’t done with me. When I got back to Earth, I cast the spell again, because I wanted to create a land that was real and alive and magical, and this time I actually did it. It’s amazing. You remember that silver pocket watch you gave me? The one from the clock-tree?”

Eliot nodded. Of course he remembered; it had been beautiful, so he’d taken it and given it to Quentin. The tree had died without it, but he’d wanted Quentin to have the watch.

“Well, it started ticking again as soon as I got there, so I put it into a tree and it grew right into it, a brand new clock-tree. I’m hoping that it seeds more clock-trees, maybe a whole forest of them eventually.” Quentin’s eyes were shining. “But anyway, that land I made? It turns out that it’s not just a land, it’s a bridge between Earth and Fillory. I was always going to come back.”

“There’s a bridge between Earth and Fillory now?” Eliot wasn’t sure how much of this was real and how much was some wish fulfillment that Quentin had been bewitched into believing, but this seemed like something solid. “I feel like, as the High King of Fillory, I should have been informed of this sooner.”

“Probably,” Quentin agreed, unrepentant. “Right now, only Alice and I know how to get there, but we were thinking that there should be a way for kids to find their way in. The ones who really _need_ it. You know.”

Eliot did know. “They better not try to overthrow me,” he said darkly. “I’ve grown accustomed to reigning.”

“It suits you,” Quentin said with a laugh. Then he got all serious again. “I finally dealt with a lot of my shit these last couple of years, as you know, and it made me realize some things.”

Quentin began to move his hands, and when Eliot looked more closely, he saw that Quentin had produced some coins and was doing some sleight of hand with them, just a simple pass, forwards and backwards, over and over. The coins looked like ordinary nickels, except that each one was stamped with the profile of Eliot’s own face.

“I’ve been in love with you since the day I met you,” Quentin said. He was looking right at Eliot and not at his hands. “I was just too confused and scared to realize it. I wanted to have all of your love for myself, but I was afraid that I wouldn’t know what to do if you gave me that kind of attention and I wouldn’t be able to handle it, so I was relieved when you didn’t. I’m sure I would have fucked it all up, like I fucked everything else up back then. But I think I’m ready now. If you want, that is,” he added, self-consciously. “I was going to explain all of this stuff first, but I kind of got carried away.”

Eliot was so tempted. He wanted to say yes, to fuck Quentin right here in this meadow, to take him back to Castle Whitespire, to proclaim him his royal consort, to live happily ever after, all of it. Quentin made it all sound so plausible. It was enormously tedious that he was simply unable to overlook how utterly wrong it would be under the circumstances.

“Quentin,” Eliot began. “Quentin, I’m so sorry, but none of this is real.”

“I’m probably saying this all wrong,” Quentin said. He was vanishing and reappearing the coins now and didn’t seem to be aware of it. “I don’t really know how.”

“No, it’s my fault.” Eliot steeled himself to confess what he had done. “I wished for you to be here.”

“You did?” Quentin’s whole face lit up. “So we both want the same thing.”

“Right, because I wished for it,” Eliot corrected him. “It’s not real. I’m so sorry that I did this to you. I wasn’t trying to, for what it’s worth.” He groped for his wine glass, but it was inverted in the grass and out of reach, so he abandoned it again.

Quentin looked gently perplexed. “You didn’t do anything to me,” he said. “Like I said, I’ve always been in love with you.”

Eliot went back to the beginning and poured out the whole story: going off by himself, sighting the Questing Beast, their unusual conversation, his accidental wish, Quentin’s subsequent appearance.

“That’s odd,” Quentin said when he had heard it all. “I thought that I left the Questing Beast a long way from here when I—you know.” He made a little gesture with his hands. “I suppose it really gets around.”

“That’s it?” Eliot demanded. “Aren’t you angry? You should be furious.”

“Not really, no.” Quentin was gazing at him fondly. “I think you’re being slightly ridiculous.”

Eliot, who was often ridiculous, found this unfair. “I’m not taking advantage of you when you’ve been mind-whammied by a talking stag,” he said staunchly. “It would be deeply wrong.”

“And I can’t convince you that I haven’t been mind-whammied by a talking stag because that’s what a person who had been mind-whammied by a talking stag would say.”

“Exactly.”

Quentin chewed his lip. “You said that you made two wishes, right?” He counted them on his fingers. “Why not use use your third wish to undo them?”

It _was_ the obvious solution. Eliot would have thought of it first if Quentin hadn’t flustered him so much.

“This would be so much easier if I hadn’t wished it away,” he complained.

“Oh well.” Quentin was looking disgustingly cheerful about this. “We’ll just have to hunt it down. I’ve done it before and it wasn’t that bad. It’ll be like old times.”

Eliot thrust the half-empty wine bottle at Quentin and took an unopened one for himself. “We’ll have to equip ourselves properly back at Castle Whitespire, I suppose,” he said. He was trying not to think about what he was going to say to Janet, who would undoubtedly figure out what was going on immediately and would be absolutely scathing about it. “You’ll finally get to see my special questing armor! I’m very proud of it.”

They didn’t get to Castle Whitespire. They didn’t even make it out of the Southern Orchard before they ran into the Questing Beast—literally ran into it, in fact. Quentin, who had taken the lead, happily munching an apple while Eliot moped along behind him, walked straight into its midsection unawares. He went down like he’d stepped on a banana peel in a slapstick comedy.

“What the fuck?” Eliot ran to Quentin, sloshing wine heedlessly from his open bottle. “What was that?”

“Your wish,” said the Questing Beast. “You said not to let Quentin see me.”

“Oh, so _now_ you start doing exactly what I wish for,” Eliot said disgustedly.

“I can hear it, anyway,” Quentin said. He seemed more startled than hurt, but he let Eliot pull him to his feet. “Go on. Make the wish.”

“Right.” Eliot glared at the stag. He’d steeled himself for a lengthy quest before he got to this part, but he supposed that it was better to end this fantasy of Quentin being in love with him now, before he had a chance to get used to it. At least he’d already given some thought to how he was going to phrase it. “I wish for you to undo any effects on Quentin’s mind from my first two wishes.”

The Questing Beast actually rolled its eyes at him. Eliot thought it was beneath its dignity as a Unique Beast of Fillory.

“Fine,” it said. “Done. Waste of three wishes, if you ask me.”

“Coming up with good wishes is hard,” Quentin said. “Hello again, by the way.”

“Hello,” it said. “You look much better than when I saw you last.”

“Thanks,” Quentin said. He was looking extremely smug, in fact. “And, just to make this perfectly clear, you never did anything to make me think that I was in love, right?”

“Of course not,” the Questing Beast spat. “I cannot. The deeper magicks—”

“Oh, fuck the deeper magicks,” Eliot said, and he kissed Quentin.

For once, there was nothing illicit or tragic or ethically dubious when they kissed, just that profound sense of rightness when their mouths met. Eliot had convinced himself that he didn’t need relationships because he had Fillory and that was enough, but that was when he’d thought that he could never have Quentin, and that was proving to be very much not the case. He felt like the pocket watch that had started ticking again.

“I see the Questing Beast’s gone,” Quentin noted.

“Good,” said Eliot, who had forgotten about it entirely. He only had eyes for Quentin, anyway. “At least it’s not a voyeur. Not that I care who sees me, because I don’t.”

“I was just wondering what it actually did for your first wish,” Quentin went on. “If anything. It could have just come along and taken the credit.”

“That bastard probably owes me another wish,” Eliot agreed. He reached for Quentin’s hand and laced their fingers together, and Quentin squeezed back. “Too bad there’s nothing else I want.”


End file.
